Donald Trump has accepted an invitation to make an unlikely diversion during his Wednesday trip out west to outline his immigration policies — Mexico.
On his Twitter feed late Tuesday night, Mr. Trump said he had “accepted the invitation of President Enrique Pena Nieto, of Mexico, and look very much forward to meeting him tomorrow.”
The office of Mr. Pena Nieto confirmed that the visit would go ahead, despite the difficulties in working out the logistics and security issues.
“Mr. @realDonaldTrump has accepted this invitation and tomorrow will meet privately with President @EPN,” the office of the Mexican presidency said, according to a computer-assisted translation by The Washington Times of the Spanish tweet.
According to Joshua Green of Bloomberg News, Mr. Trump will be accompanied on the Mexico trip by former New York Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani and Sen. Jeff Sessions, Alabama Republican.
Mr. Pena Nieto had said in a statement Tuesday night that he had invited both Mr. Trump and Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton and said both invitations were “well-received.”
According to the Washington Post, which first reported that Mr. Trump was considering the sudden and surprising move, the Republican nominee plans to sandwich the Mexico City meeting between a morning fundraiser in California and an evening speech in Arizona on immigration policy.
CNN and The Associated Press reported similarly late Tuesday night.
But the visit has the potential to go badly wrong for Mr. Trump, as Mr. Pena Nieto, along with numerous other current and former Mexican officials, has harshly denounced him.
They have accused him of being a racist, a dictator and more for his anti-immigration proposals and such remarks about Mexico as accusing it of sending rapists and drug dealers to the U.S. and vowing to make it pay for a U.S. border wall.
U.S. presidential candidates often travel abroad to burnish their foreign-policy credentials, but the trips are usually to friendly countries such as Britain and Israel, rather than countries where the candidate is as loathed as Mr. Trump is in Mexico.
The trips are also traditionally planned and choreographed for weeks, which would not be the case here either.
• Victor Morton can be reached at vmorton@washingtontimes.com.
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